The Porsche Manufacturing Tour
unny story about this tour- no cameras or cell phones allowed on it. While I couldn't take a picture of any of the things inside, I can tell you that it was awesome. You can't be in Germany and not go on at least one engineering, manufacturing, or automobile tour.
The tour was actually great! I say actually because I think most girls correlate car museums with boring, but I've always like learning about cars and especially fancy ones. For those of you don't know, the original Porsche factory is the building in Stuttgart. It still stands today, as a historical landmark, and it can never be altered. The headquarters is technically in a city district called Zuffenhausen, but this is in Stuttgart.
In the picture, between the main buildings you can see an overhead bridge. This bridge is actually see through and the cars drive through it when they are completely finished!
History:
Ferdinand Porsche was a professor who worked at a motor vehicle development company and was asked by the German government to help out with engineering a project. The project was to design a car for the people- literally, volks wagen in German. Thus, the Volkswagen Beetle was born and quickly became one of the most successful car designs of all time. Although Ferdinand was the lead engineer on these projects, he never worked under his own name. Ferdinand helped to design many war tanks during WWII, such as the Tiger tank, which looks like a typical tank. He was eventually arrested and held prisoner for war crimes.
During this imprisonment, Ferdinand's son, Ferry, decided that he would design his own car because he could not find an existing one that he wanted to buy. He designed his own model and pre-sold 400 units to German auto-dealers, without them ever laying eyes on a prototype. The demand for the car quickly reached 80,000 units and Ferry decided to open up his own company. He collaborated with the owners of the company that produced the Volkswagen and bought out their existing infrastructure. The buildings where these first Porsche's were made are still standing. Originally, a lot of the Porsche's parts were components of the Volkswagen Beetle. Eventually, Porsche designed higher quality products for his own vehicles, but the two company are still closely connected.
Cool Stuff
The plant in Stuttgart is very unique. I'm sure I will get some of the technical details wrong but here are some of the things I remember. For starters, the building that Professor Ferdinand worked in still exists and is right across the street from the building that owned Volkwagen. Instead of having a large building on one floor, the Porsche plant is a small building with high ceilings. The assembly line starts on the 4th floor and with each stage it goes down a floor until is it is tested and driven directly out of the building. Although in the US it may not seem like this, but almost every Porsche is custom designed. People often question why doesn't Porsche use more robots and save labor costs, this is because it would take longer to program all the robots to do such individualized takes than it would to train engineers to do these tasks themselves. The leather is hand stitched by workers on the same floor as the dashboard is assembled. On the engine assembly line, it must pass through 15,000 checkpoints. These checks can be as complicated as an air pressure check to make sure the chambers won't leak, or as simple as scanners checking how many screws are in a mechanism and how many times each screw has been turned. These checkpoints ensure that the engine will be running 100% perfectly before it leaves the shop. If the engine does not pass through a certain checkpoint it is automatically returned to the previous station to be fixed and sent through the checkpoint again.
Everything is perfectly computer and perfectly thought out. They have a computer figure out complex logarithms to determine which order would be more efficient to work on the cars. If the Boxer model requires 6 min and the 911 model only requires 4, there is a system to figure out which would work best. Another interesting fact is that there is no "warehouse" in this production line. This is because leaving spare parts around gives workers the mentality that there is room for error- there is not. Everything must be completely perfect when assembled because there is no back up plan. Everything used to assemble a car is currently in the building. When a car is ordered, a computer system illuminates lights by the specific parts needed to build that model. The worker must track down each light, take the part, and turn the light off. This ensures no human error. The parts are then driven by an automated driving vehicle to the assembly line. Its so complex, yet it is so cool. The building itself is so clean- it really shows off the best of the German stereotype.
HOWEVER, my favorite thing that I learned today was why Porsche's have the ignition on the left side of the steering wheel. This is a very annoying thing as my left hand is practically useless. Since Porsche also manufactures race cars, back in the old days this was a trick to quicken a racer's time. Apparently in these old days before a race you had to run up to you car and get into it and this was how the race began, no shot gun. Well, Germans being savvy engineers tried to come up with a way to cut down on the time it took to start the car. The 'hold down on the break and the accelerator at the same time and then when you release the break the car will speed away' trick was not around. So, the ignition was put on the left hand side so the racer could start the car with one hand and put the car in gear with the other hand, maybe cutting down on 1 or 2 seconds of the race time. This became a kind of tradition. There was a period of time when Porsche actually produced cars with the ignition on the right hand side of the car, but a an old legend says that Ferry Porsche's wife was in some sort of accident where she went to start her car on the left and it wasn't there- so she was hit, and ever since then the ignition has been on the left! Kinda crazy but kinda cool!
The tour was actually great! I say actually because I think most girls correlate car museums with boring, but I've always like learning about cars and especially fancy ones. For those of you don't know, the original Porsche factory is the building in Stuttgart. It still stands today, as a historical landmark, and it can never be altered. The headquarters is technically in a city district called Zuffenhausen, but this is in Stuttgart.
In the picture, between the main buildings you can see an overhead bridge. This bridge is actually see through and the cars drive through it when they are completely finished!
History:
Ferdinand Porsche was a professor who worked at a motor vehicle development company and was asked by the German government to help out with engineering a project. The project was to design a car for the people- literally, volks wagen in German. Thus, the Volkswagen Beetle was born and quickly became one of the most successful car designs of all time. Although Ferdinand was the lead engineer on these projects, he never worked under his own name. Ferdinand helped to design many war tanks during WWII, such as the Tiger tank, which looks like a typical tank. He was eventually arrested and held prisoner for war crimes.
During this imprisonment, Ferdinand's son, Ferry, decided that he would design his own car because he could not find an existing one that he wanted to buy. He designed his own model and pre-sold 400 units to German auto-dealers, without them ever laying eyes on a prototype. The demand for the car quickly reached 80,000 units and Ferry decided to open up his own company. He collaborated with the owners of the company that produced the Volkswagen and bought out their existing infrastructure. The buildings where these first Porsche's were made are still standing. Originally, a lot of the Porsche's parts were components of the Volkswagen Beetle. Eventually, Porsche designed higher quality products for his own vehicles, but the two company are still closely connected.
Cool Stuff
The plant in Stuttgart is very unique. I'm sure I will get some of the technical details wrong but here are some of the things I remember. For starters, the building that Professor Ferdinand worked in still exists and is right across the street from the building that owned Volkwagen. Instead of having a large building on one floor, the Porsche plant is a small building with high ceilings. The assembly line starts on the 4th floor and with each stage it goes down a floor until is it is tested and driven directly out of the building. Although in the US it may not seem like this, but almost every Porsche is custom designed. People often question why doesn't Porsche use more robots and save labor costs, this is because it would take longer to program all the robots to do such individualized takes than it would to train engineers to do these tasks themselves. The leather is hand stitched by workers on the same floor as the dashboard is assembled. On the engine assembly line, it must pass through 15,000 checkpoints. These checks can be as complicated as an air pressure check to make sure the chambers won't leak, or as simple as scanners checking how many screws are in a mechanism and how many times each screw has been turned. These checkpoints ensure that the engine will be running 100% perfectly before it leaves the shop. If the engine does not pass through a certain checkpoint it is automatically returned to the previous station to be fixed and sent through the checkpoint again.
Everything is perfectly computer and perfectly thought out. They have a computer figure out complex logarithms to determine which order would be more efficient to work on the cars. If the Boxer model requires 6 min and the 911 model only requires 4, there is a system to figure out which would work best. Another interesting fact is that there is no "warehouse" in this production line. This is because leaving spare parts around gives workers the mentality that there is room for error- there is not. Everything must be completely perfect when assembled because there is no back up plan. Everything used to assemble a car is currently in the building. When a car is ordered, a computer system illuminates lights by the specific parts needed to build that model. The worker must track down each light, take the part, and turn the light off. This ensures no human error. The parts are then driven by an automated driving vehicle to the assembly line. Its so complex, yet it is so cool. The building itself is so clean- it really shows off the best of the German stereotype.
HOWEVER, my favorite thing that I learned today was why Porsche's have the ignition on the left side of the steering wheel. This is a very annoying thing as my left hand is practically useless. Since Porsche also manufactures race cars, back in the old days this was a trick to quicken a racer's time. Apparently in these old days before a race you had to run up to you car and get into it and this was how the race began, no shot gun. Well, Germans being savvy engineers tried to come up with a way to cut down on the time it took to start the car. The 'hold down on the break and the accelerator at the same time and then when you release the break the car will speed away' trick was not around. So, the ignition was put on the left hand side so the racer could start the car with one hand and put the car in gear with the other hand, maybe cutting down on 1 or 2 seconds of the race time. This became a kind of tradition. There was a period of time when Porsche actually produced cars with the ignition on the right hand side of the car, but a an old legend says that Ferry Porsche's wife was in some sort of accident where she went to start her car on the left and it wasn't there- so she was hit, and ever since then the ignition has been on the left! Kinda crazy but kinda cool!